Ok ok, 2D art can be great too and used in game. BUT, the goal of this thread was to examine models in game and discuss what makes them good.

This could include there textures the way they are rigged and animated, how they interact with the environment or just there general shape and topology. It would be hard to go into detail of the geometric topology of a sprite :P

As much as I love 2D graphics myself, I have to say, there is not to much to discusse when it comes to them...

That sure is a lot but I stick to my guns when I say thats done through an animation blender that counts every combination of independent body parts animations as a single animation even if the difference between two is nothing other then clenching a fist

e.g. running with a sword in hand
e.g. running with a clenched fist.

the only difference is the arms and hands. This is programmed in and the arms motion is blended onto the character through code. This prevents the animators from having to redo the entire run animation again as 13,000 individual animations would take up quite a lot of the disk space.

That sure is a lot but I stick to my guns when I say thats done through an animation blender that counts every combination of independent body parts animations as a single animation even if the difference between two is nothing other then clenching a fist

e.g. running with a sword in hand
e.g. running with a clenched fist.

the only difference is the arms and hands. This is programmed in and the arms motion is blended onto the character through code. This prevents the animators from having to redo the entire run animation again as 13,000 individual animations would take up quite a lot of the disk space.

And I still stick to my point that no matter how you count the animations, more look better. Even counting it as you did (and, in all likelyhood, how they did), it looks better than only being able to run one way, regardless if you belive animations should be counted this way. Counting it this way, AC has more animations on their main character then any other video game. Counting it any other way, it is likely they also hold this honor, but I don't have a source on that.